My Personal Finance Journey

Advice Needed On Health Insurance Coverage Gap Until Sept. 1st

Howdy everyone!

Among the many financial changes I am going through right now with finishing up graduate school this week, I learned today that my student health insurance ended (without notifying me) on August 14th.

Since I will likely not be starting a full time job until October, I needed to explore my options for maintaining health insurance (the top priority in the account hierarchy). Unfortunately, the health insurance plan I had does not have a COBRA extension coverage option.

Therefore, I had to scramble today to find a new individual insurance plan on my own. I went through the HealthCare.gov site and enrolled for a Gold level plan ($260 premium per month for individual plan), but the trouble is that the coverage doesn’t start until September 1st. 

Does anyone know if it is possible to obtain immediate health care coverage with Healthcare.gov, or am I simply out of luck and need to be careful for the next 10 days? 🙂

***Photo courtesy of https://www.flickr.com/photos/marinadelcastell/10273621876/in/

About the Author Jacob A Irwin

Hi folks! My name is Jacob. I am the owner and operator of My Personal Finance Journey. I started this blog in January of 2010 and have enjoyed the journey ever since. Since finishing up graduate school in Virginia in 2014, I have been working in biopharmaceutical development in Colorado. You can read more about me and this site here​. Please contact me if you have any questions!

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  • Jeff says:
    August 20, 2014 at 10:50 am

    In short, No. I think you’re stuck for the next 10 days. Im guessing that Apr 14 was your graduation date – congrats!

    Reply
  • Wendy says:
    August 20, 2014 at 9:18 am

    You may be able to get short term catastrophic insurance. It should be cheap and will only last until the federal exchange opens back up in October. It will only pay for catastrophic health issues during the time the policy is in force. Call a couple of local agents that sell health insurance and see if they can help you – if you have a Farm Bureau agent, call and see if they can get you into a BCBS plan. Problem is, that catastrophic may not be available, either. There was a window once the federal exchange closed to do these things, not sure when that ended, if it has.
    Wendy recently posted…Free Resource: The Smithsonian’s Ocean PortalMy Profile

    Reply
  • Emily @ evolvingPF says:
    August 19, 2014 at 5:46 pm

    I don’t have a firm suggestion for you, unfortunately. I had to be proactive in figuring out about my health insurance – my department stopped paying my premium, but I only found out because I asked. Would it be possible to go on your fiancee’s health insurance or get insurance through a professional organization? But even that would take processing time – I find it hard to imagine anything would be faster than the ACA coverage you already arranged for.

    Good luck being careful, if that’s what you end up having to do.

    P.S. I also looked into getting ACA coverage for myself for after my student insurance ended, and ran into a speedbump when Experian couldn’t verify my identity. I had to apply over the phone (literally the CSR read me the forms for an hour and I voiced my answers) and submit proof of my identity through mail. I ended up going on my husband’s insurance before going through with the ID verification. I find it really strange that the ID verification had been outsourced to a credit bureau.
    Emily @ evolvingPF recently posted…How to Work Out without a Gym MembershipMy Profile

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